CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Former Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday a pillar of the
arms control system could fall if Washington and Moscow replace
the landmark START nuclear arms reduction treaty with a less
formal pact.

The START treaty, signed in 1991, set ceilings on the size
of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals and became a symbol of
the end of the Cold War. Washington has indicated it will not
extend it in 2009 but wants to replace it with a pact that
eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons curbs.

"I don't see a negotiating process actually happening,"
Gorbachev, who signed the START treaty with then-President
George Bush, the father of the current U.S. president, told a
Harvard University forum.

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Gorbachev commented only briefly on the big majority won by
President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party in Sunday's
parliamentary election, saying Putin had "really rescued" the
party. "Putin came to their help," he said.

Diplomatic analysts have said a U.S. position on START
reflects U.S. President George W. Bush's practice of
repudiating arms control as a means of curbing nuclear weapons
while relying more on measures like export controls,
interdiction and sanctions.

Russia has said the treaty should be replaced with a
formal, binding pact, and not an informal arrangement.

Gorbachev said verifying and inspecting each country's
nuclear arsenals was crucial. "It is totally wrong to declare
that this system is obsolete and unnecessary after the end of
the Cold War," he said. "It is totally wrong."

Gorbachev also said another milestone arms control pact,
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which he signed
with Ronald Reagan in 1987, must be preserved.